The Russian World

Rereading its long history, the conquest of the “thousand square kilometers” of the Kursk region by the Ukrainian army also has symbolic significance, even before the military or diplomatic gains that might result. It is a way of reaffirming Kiev's historic superiority over Moscow. Just as the Russians open a grand new complex in Sevastopol in Crimea.

For the philosopher Nemtsev, a latent tendency towards violence has become a pivotal tool to regain what has been lost. Civilians become "quasi-soldiers", who engage in ad hoc individual and group training. Even everyday clothing comes with a war theme, like tactical gloves and protective knee pads. War is a key aspect of Russian literature, art and culture.

In Sevastopol, celebrations for the feast of the Baptism of Kievan Rus' have provided an opportunity to cover the unity between Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia with a Trinitarian aura. Likewise, the date has allowed Moscow to pull off a sensational exchange of political prisoners with Germany and the United States to rid Russia of its most notorious "foreign agents" who "disturbed internal peace" even from their prison cells.

While the average Russian is not in support the current state of action, neither can they counter it, imobilized by dread at the possibile outcomes of the war: defeat would result in panic, but victory could destabilise social relations. The incognito of the post war period, whatever the outcome of the current events.

For the historian of ideas Mikhail Maiatsky, Putin's Russia has "erased philosophy", replacing it with a pseudo-scientific patriotic ideology, based on the arbitrary rereading of Russian and universal history. A focus on existentialist thinker Ivan Ilyin is not meant to reflect on the meaning of ongoing tragedies. An “aesthetics of renaissance” on which Alexei Losev wrote in the 1980s is more urgent than ever.

Just as the bombing was underway on the treatment site for young Ukrainian cancer patients, the exhibition extolling 'Russia without end' closed (to reopen in permanent form) in Moscow. While internal successes are praised, external extermination is commented on with cynical indifference: 'It's war, there's nothing special about it'.

In Moscow, one can frequently hear people ask: “Are you with Biden or Trump?”, not to so much for ideological or geopolitical reasons, but for a mysterious sense of attraction and repulsion towards the great enemy, which in many respects is perceived as a Big Brother.

Like Crimea, Korea is key to destabilising Asia as well as Europe, amid permanent tensions and growing winds of war elsewhere. This seems to be the real purpose of Putin's visits, which from China and Uzbekistan to Korea and Vietnam are part of a plan for a new "world order" while trying to instil fear in both East and West.

June 12 June again this year marks the most important national holiday in post-Soviet Russia. But in order to avoid conflicting interpretations over its origins, Putin goes as far to refer to Prince Rjurik, the mythological Variegus chieftain who, according to ancient chronicles, started the history of Rus' in the year 862 in Novgorod, even before the foundation of Kiev

Many people in Russia tried to honour his memory on June 4, his birthday. His Anti-Corruption Foundation remains an important legacy, transcending the capabilities of his followers or the prestige of his wife Julia, and may still have a role to play even in a Russia now locked in neo-Soviet totalitarianism.

A series of video-documentaries circulated by Maša Pevčik, one of Naval'nyj's best-known contributors, shift all the blame and responsibility for what is happening today onto the bandits and corrupt people who prevented the development of a free and democratic society in the 1990s. Putin propagandists and opposition publicists, older and the younger generations, all cloaked in guilt and resentment, speak to those years.

An in-depth analysis by Meduza's Signal column assessed the real level of popular support for the war. The “majority of Russians” and poll respondents in polls are not the same, and the sample is becoming less and less credible. Surveys are a means of “manipulation” and “information”. The "average Russian male", who repeats patriotic slogans, is an example.